July 26, 2011

Why "Intent" Is Not Enough To Move The Needle For Digital Out-of-Home Advertising

A recent online survey by the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) of 1,000 strategic media planners from across the United States confirms digital out-of-home media’s continuing momentum. According to the survey, more than 86% of media planners said that they intend to include digital out-of-home in their media plans in 2012, which is up from 65% who said they had included the medium in their plans in 2010. These figures represent a 2 year gain (2010 to 2012) of 32% among key advertising decision makers.

One key fact that stood out in the survey was that almost 44% of media planners said that they would shift money away from television toward digital out-of-home in order to fund OOH campaigns. The trend toward increased specification of digital out-of-home advertising in media plans is encouraging, and on the surface one could conclude that the medium is fast approaching a new milestone. But before we get too excited about these results, we should take a step back and take into consideration changing market dynamics that can impact the allocation of advertising budgets.

Hold It, Not So Fast!

The DPAA’s survey focuses on media planners “intent” to add digital out-of-home advertising networks to media plans, but intent doesn’t mean dollars will actually be committed from a brand’s campaign–it’s only the first step in the process. As we all know, advertising budgets are tight, and getting dollars shifted from one media channel to another is difficult. Even under the best of circumstances, wrestling dollars away from television advertising budgets won’t be easy.